Letters: Elderly Drivers And Lance Armstrong

It's Tuesday, and time to read from your comments. Our conversation about older drivers and when it's time to take away the keys brought this email from Robert in Rancho Mirage, California: As a primary care physician in a retirement community, I have hundreds of elderly patients who drive with various mental and physical impairments. Often, their children approach me, desirous of my stopping their parent from driving. Too often, these children live at a distance, note their parent's declining faculties and expect me to be the guardian, policeman and best friend of their parent, as well as the physician. This I can do if I must, but I often think that the last thing these children consider doing is taking their elderly parents into their own homes and taking responsibility for dad or mom, including responsibility for their driving privilege.

We talked about the scathing report on Lance Armstrong from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Yesterday, as you probably heard, he was formally stripped of his victories in the Tour de France. Justin in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, commented: I am a longtime 30-year cyclist. I support Lance in spite of the fact that he did dope. He saved an industry, made millions for Nike, Trek and Oakley, not to mention the millions donated to Livestrong. The good outweighs the cost. If he were the only one, it would be different. But he was following the culture of the sport at the time. Please don't confuse my support of Lance for support of doping.

We also heard from Terry: The sad part of Lance's choice to cheat is that many of the USA's talented clean riders of that era; Andy Hampsten and Davis Phinney come to mind, most likely retired early rather than cheat. Good for those guys for making the smart choice. Too bad for those of us who love to watch them ride. Hopefully, something good will come out of this and the young riders coming up today will not have to make that choice, and Lance Armstrong will go away.

And a correction. We misspoke yesterday in our conversation about the political lives of former presidential candidates. Gerald Ford picked Bob Dole as his running mate in 1976. Twenty years later, Dole ran at the top of the Republican ticket.

Finally, after we talked last week about hackers and the growing cyberwars that involved the U.S., Iran, China, Russia and other countries, WCGeekChic(ph) tweeted a clarification: The proper term for most of what you're talking about is cracking and crackers. There is a difference. Some hackers make the case that what they do is constructive. They create and share new code and programs while what crackers do is destructive and illegal. They break into systems and steal information.

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